LETTER FROM THE EDITOR: A good man on the team...

You never know when someone or something is going to enter your world and make a significant impact.  

About three years ago, the Columbia Basin Herald had one of those people show up and make a difference. Not just for us, for the Columbia Basin, the high school and youth athletes it holds, and for Washington sports writing in general. 

All that to say that Ian Bivona, our recently promoted sports editor has left us. I’d say that the bullpen is a bit quieter, but Ian didn’t really talk a lot. He often zoned in on his monitors writing while listening to what I imagine must be an extensive number of sports podcasts. 

The office definitely feels different without him here though. Saturday was his last day, and as I write this, we are experiencing our first day without him. It just feels a bit dimmer in here, and not just because of the overcast skies.  

We’re glad for Ian though. He’d gotten the opportunity to go to Long Island University for his master's degree and will be writing for their sports department full-time as he does so. He’s even got a swanky Long Island apartment lined up on campus. It’s a phenomenal opportunity for our favorite Sports Writer of the Year 2024.  

The Basin will miss him. During the last three years, he’s covered everything from an immense number of charity golf tournaments to the opening of a BMX track in Moses Lake to multiple Royal Knights football championships and Moses Lake swimming. His dedication to the local athletes in our high schools and in our summer leagues was astounding to me.  

Often, Ian would plan ahead and work out the vast majority, if not all, of the content for our annual previews — the Gridiron Guide, Fall Sports Preview, Winter Sports Preview and others.  

He even knocked out a few business features and health stories that were a bit outside of his wheelhouse.  

From my perspective as editor, one of the most amazing parts of all of that was his accuracy and his clean copy. His writing was clean and I rarely had to do more than fix a comma placement or adjust his headlines to fit in the available space on the page.  

Having a writer who provides clean copy and only has very occasional corrections is a godsend. It can save hours, and in a deadline-driven world can reduce the amount of time it takes to get content to the designers who put the stories on the page. In turn, that gets the pages to the press earlier and allows more leeway to fix issues that come up along the way from the court or field to your coffee table.  

Ian is on his way back to his family home in Virginia now, and his parents and cat, Honey, are traveling with him. There’s a stop scheduled along the way to visit his younger sister at college and soon he’ll be on Long Island covering another beat.  

That said, the work Ian did while he was here acknowledged hundreds of athletes in many sports, all dedicated to excellence and representing our communities well. He even helped us relaunch our sports section after COVID got done being a pain in the — well, you know. A local newspaper’s goal is to document community history, including the achievements of its athletes. Ian met that goal as best he could while covering 12 high schools, a community college and regional universities. I’m proud of him for that. 

I’m going to miss having him here. Not just because he is a good sports writer, but because he’s a good man with a strong work ethic who made the Columbia Basin Herald team and the communities we serve a little bit stronger. It’s been a good three years. 

Ian’s good people — even if he is a Jets fan.  

With appreciation,
R. Hans "Rob" Miller
Managing Editor